Lesotho's Revolution For Prosperity (RFP) party, led by one of the richest businessmen in the country, has secured most of the parliamentary seats, but didn’t manage to get an overall majority, according to the Election Commission's statement on the results of last week’s parliamentary election.
Despite the fact that the RFP attained 56 seats, outperforming its closest rival the Democratic Congress party almost twofold, the result isn’t enough for the party to form a government on its own. This is because according to Lesotho’s laws, a party needs a majority, which constitutes over 60 seats, in order to have the right to make and pass laws in the 120-seat parliament.
If the RFP manages to gain a majority in parliament via a coalition, it will be able to oust the governing All Basotho Convention party (ABC), which has been in power for more than five years and whose rule has been associated with failure in the implementation of constitutional reforms. The reforms were aimed at solving a range of institutional political issues in the country.
The coming of a new party revives hopes in the expert community that it will succeed in forming a coalition, given that the RFP needs a relatively small number of additional members, as well as in pushing through the much-anticipated constitutional reforms.
In turn, the ABC, formed in 2006, won 48 seats in the previous elections of 2017, against only eight seats that they managed to get this year.
Back in May, all the major parliamentary parties of the country signed a pledge to adopt a consolidated bill on constitutional reforms by June, the so called Omnibus Constitutional Bill, which aims to put an end to the institutional instability in Lesotho. The changes were reportedly supposed to cover parliamentary and party reforms, adjustment of the prime minister's role, the procedure of transition from party to party, etc.
Moreover, Lesotho faces such problems as a low barrier for party registration, lack of a minimum threshold for entering parliament, and an absence of rules regulating the “migration” of deputies from one party to another party. All these lead to the existence of a perceived excessive number of political parties. For instance, in the last elections, voters in the country, which has a population slightly above two million, voted for representatives from 65 registered parties.
Many experts also argue a that the mixed-member proportional (MMP) system used as the electoral model in Lesotho is responsible for the current instability.
The Lesotho National Assembly is elected on the basis of the MMP system, which means that 80 members out of the total 120 in the National Assembly, the lower chamber of parliament, are elected under a "first-past the post" system and the remaining 40 members elected in accordance with the principle of proportional representation.
The parliament was supposed to pass the Omnibus Constitutional bill by the end of its term in July - 90 days before the election scheduled for October 7, however, it didn't, as different opinions on some aspects of the bill held progress back.
As a result, Lesotho’s Council of State gave recommendations to recall the parliament in order to pass the bill before the elections and also advised to declare a state of emergency as the only way to do so. A state of emergency was declared in August 2022, but both the High Court and Court of Appeal ruled that the recall of parliament was outside the powers of King Letsie III, and therefore the two bills were struck down.